I read this NYTimes article with complete disbelief. It follows the treatment of two detainees held in a military prison in Iraq, and the details are outrageous.
The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.
Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.
The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.
That’s right: they took an American citizen who wasn’t an enemy combatant and detained him without counsel or charges. They held an American citizen without proof or charges. Because they didn’t talk to other agencies outside the DOD (for example the FBI), they didn’t have a clear picture of the situation.
“Even Saddam Hussein had more legal counsel than I ever had,” said Mr. Vance, who said he planned to sue the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, on grounds that his constitutional rights had been violated. “While we were detained, we wrote a letter to the camp commandant stating that the same democratic ideals we are trying to instill in the fledgling democratic country of Iraq, from simple due process to the Magna Carta, we are absolutely, positively refusing to follow ourselves.”
This is George Bush’s America. This is the America created by fearmongering Republicans who spent so much of their convention scaring people about 9/11 so they could lead the country deeper into this hell. This country was founded by people whose purpose was to curtail a government running roughshod over their rights. These limits form the core of our Constitution.
None of that matters to this administration, though, which has declared itself judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to detainees. Even more troubling is that the military considers this to be a perfectly normal situation. There’s no investigation into what happened or how it happened, and there’s no indication that anyone in the military believes there’s something to correct here. A system built and geared around preventing innocents from going to jail has been turned into one that doesn’t mind if innocents go to jail and are tortured. Tough luck, I guess.
Just read some of this stuff, it’s surreal:
A spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s detention operations in Iraq, First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso, said in written answers to questions that the men had been “treated fair and humanely,” and that there was no record of either man complaining about their treatment.
This is an idiotic response. As Atrios says:
Now, the reporter lets this comment stand without any response. The smart reader, of course, will note its Kafkaesque absurdity. They didn’t have access to attorneys. They were placed in solitary confinement. They were in cold cells, with fluorescent lights left on all night.
And First Lt. Lea Ann Fracasso is suggesting she checked with the Complaints Department, and found nothing, so there’s nothing to see here.
Among the rights guaranteed by our Constitution include the right to face your accuser and to see the evidence against you. Not in George Bush’s America:
At the hearings, a woman and two men wearing Army uniforms but no name tags or rank designations sat a table with two stacks of documents. One was about an inch thick, and the men were allowed to see some papers from that stack. The other pile was much thicker, but they were told that this pile was evidence only the board could see.
…
On May 7, the Camp Cropper detention board met again, without either man present, and determined that Mr. Ertel was “an innocent civilian,” according to the spokeswoman for detention operations. It took authorities 18 more days to release him.
…
The military has never explained why it continued to consider Mr. Vance a security threat, except to say that officials decided to release him after further review of his case.
Read the entire article, it’s completely unbelievable. If this is how they’re treating American citizens, I shudder to think how they’re treating innocent Iraqis captured off the streets. In a war that aims to create a democracy in a country ravaged by a brutal dictatorship, acting like the former government isn’t going to allow people to trust the new government. When people are intimidated, they will seek protection. The militias and the insurgents provide that and they provide that protection against us as much as they do the other sects.
It’s why we need to leave, not because it’s not important to see things through in Iraq, but because we’ve become part of the problem. We’re not going to be able to be part of the solution, especially if people listen to folks like McCain, Lieberman, and Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno instead of folks like Lt. Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli who suggest funneling more money to job creation programs in Baghdad.
Ultimately, intimidation won’t work. People are afraid of the police, they’re afraid of us, and therefore, they will ally themselves with the militias who claim to protect them. Changing that dynamic is most important and a larger American force isn’t going to help.
I’ll leave you with this nice little bit from the Times article linked two paragraphs above:
The neighborhood is not far from the site of a suicide bombing on Tuesday in which at least 70 Shiite day laborers were killed and more than 230 wounded.
The gunmen drove up in cars with police markings and brandished automatic rifles, witnesses said. “People were in a panic,” said a 36-year-old spare-parts merchant. “Some people were trying to close their shops and leave. Others were just trying to slip away. I walked away as fast as I could. A few seconds later, I heard heavy shooting.”
Another merchant said he broke free from the gunmen before they could shove him into a car. “They seemed to know who they wanted to kidnap because they’d take one person and leave others behind,” he said.
The men were blindfolded and driven off to a building in an unknown location, a Shiite man who was later freed said. He said the captives were shackled and kept in a poorly lighted room. The kidnappers asked the victims whether they were Sunni or Shiite, and whether they had ties to any terrorist groups.
By late Thursday, at least 25 abductees had been freed, all Shiites, the Interior Ministry official said. It was unclear how many others — presumably Sunnis, though that was impossible to determine — were still being held.
Because the violence wasn’t wanton (people seem to be getting released), I suspect this was a more “official” police action. Frightening democracy we’ve created.
